As much as I dislike 3D charts and don’t want Curbed readers to wear 3D glasses smeared with greasy popcorn butter, I thought I’d use them on a simple topic. For each quarterly market report release, I group Manhattan into four distinct geographic regions and measure the market share of their sales during each quarter. This chart shows the market share of each region based on sales activity by region…

This week I took a look at Manhattan’s year-over-year listing trends by the number of bedrooms on a weekly basis. I threw in a few milestones using ridiculous artwork (hey, this is Curbed!) to help provide some context. To state the obvious, listing inventory is very volatile and there are periods of time where certain segments stray from the pack. It’s clear that the top end of the market (four bedrooms, pink line) strayed the most over the past few years as many owners tried to piggyback onto a handful of trophy sales…

After 2 years of growth, annual pace of rental price growth show some signs of easing.

Here’s an excerpt from the report:

MANHATTAN The year-overyear increase in median monthly rents have pressed higher since July 2011, averaging a 5% annual pace. The Manhattan median monthly rent was $3,200, up 3.5% from the same period last year. Average rent expanded at a similar pace, rising 3.2% to $3,951, just shy of the $4,000 threshold and the 7th highest monthly level in 60 months. The occurrence of rental concessions remained limited, with only 4.4% of all new rentals having some form applied. When concessions were used, they were the equivalent of 1.2 months rent…

BROOKLYN The Brooklyn median rent slipped 3% to $2,579 from the same period last year. After reaching a year-to-date 2013 peak rate increase of 11.3% in March and a 1% rate increase in April, the rate decreased in May to the lowest level of the year. Rental price growth has remained volatile monthto- month, but when using a 90-day moving average, rent growth has been maintained since late 2010…

Absorption defined for the purposes of this chart is: Number of months to sell all listing inventory at the annual pace of sales activity. (The definition of absorption in my market report series reflects the quarterly pace – nearly the same)

I started this analysis in August 2009 so I am able to show side-by side year-over-year comparisons. The blue line showing the 10-year quarterly average travels up and down because of the change in scale caused by some of the significant volatility seen at the upper end of the market. The pink line represents the overall average rate of the most recently completed month.

Side by side Manhattan regional comparison:

May 2013 v. May 2012

[click images to expand]

Significant acceleration in the pace of the market below $2M, not much change from $3M to $10M and continued slow down north of $10M

Comments Off on [Manhattan Absorption] May 2013 – Fast Pace Below $2M Remains, Slowing On Top

There has been remarkably little YTD improvement of available co-op/condo supply in Manhattan. This chart reflects co-op, condo and townhouse supply (existing + new dev).

While we are now seeing a little more inventory enter the market, sales are outpacing prior year levels erasing any meaningful gains in supply. This chart illustrates how flat supply has remained in 2013.

With inventory hovering around record lows, we’ve started to observe more sales of combined apartments. Combined apartments (i.e. connecting two or more adjacent apartments) tend to have inferior layouts than their equivalent-sized counterparts that were originally designed by the building architect. We are seeing more “combo” sales now and are also performing more hallway appraisals as of late (where apartment owners acquire the end of a hallway to enhance the layout of combined apartments)…

Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities” gave me the phrase “master of the universe” which I can liberally use when (respectfully) describing the penthouse apartment demographic, but his earlier book cover better matched the chart colors – hence the title.

But I digress…

I got a call by a reporter who thought there was an uptick in Manhattan penthouse sales. So I looked at the market from January 2012 by month for frequency and price trends. Penthouse sales represent a very specific and small market niche with a huge disparity in characteristics.

I found 329 penthouse sales out of a pool of 14,612 sales over the past 14 months. I tagged any sale with a “PH or some abbreviation of the word “penthouse” in the label. Yes there are penthouses that aren’t necessarily tagged as such, but that occurance would be random and not likely a factor. That’s a 2.3% market share for penthouse sales which seems to correlate to the housing stock i.e. 100 unit building with 2 penthouses.

Although a 2.3% market share seems a tad high to me, no real trend or pattern emerged. I did observe that the average sales price of a Manhattan penthouse was $4,249,323 since early 2012 or 3.1x higher than the overall average sales price of $1,354,766 in 1Q 2013.

I can’t let a bunch of research time go to waste so I whipped up a chart that shows…nothing.

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About Jonathan Miller

Jonathan Miller is President and CEO of Miller Samuel Inc., a real estate appraisal and consulting firm he co-founded in 1986. He is a state-certified real estate appraiser in New York and Connecticut, performing court testimony as an expert witness in various local, state and federal courts. He holds the Counselors of Real Estate (CRE) and Certified Relocation Professional (CRP) designations. He is an Appraiser “A” Member of the Real Estate Board of New York and a member of Relocation Appraisers and Consultants, Inc.Learn More...

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